In some great hope myself and my partner in crime have been doing some heavy research into running and ultimate site. One that will have a lot of potential. After talking making business plans for over 30 differant big niche's which the negatives overpowered the positives, now we've been researching on ad networks just like adengage.com. We both have agreed on pushing in $3000 each on the project. $5000 if we get excited about it, but there's an issue that we've been having with talking about it. It isn't final that we are going to start one, but like the other sites we have to look at the possibilites as our new site launch date is comming very close. I was thinking about getting publishers and advertiser and it struck me as a really tough thing to work out. The promoting must be like a swing going back and fourth. Sure we could get publishers by the hundreds in a day, but what about the advertisers. I assume they would be harder to get. Without the good amount of advertisers the click paying would pay out. What are the ways that Ad-Network owners stabilize that the flow of advertisers can equal the publishers? Is there anything else I should know about an ad network just in case we do decide to go for it? (of course you are going to say that it's way to competitive becuase of adsense but I won't consider that, because the internet is big enough for another)
Well you have touched on a very common scenario... its the chicken/egg scenario. What came first the chicken? or the egg? An ad network is the same... you need publishers to publish ads and you need advertisers so that publishers can make money. Obviously I have experience with this launching my own network and all I can say is don't expect miracles, it's a slow process and there is a lot of competition but if you come out with a unique, reliable and competitive service then you should be able to attract the right mix of customers.
The thing is, for example, Ad-engage has a good system. If no one wants an ad on your site then they have network ads. typicially 90% of the sites as publishers are pretty much network ads. How the heck does adengage find the right amount of network advertisers. Advertisers want only a certian amount, and never more or less. it's seems like an impossible thing to achieve because it seems there is never a "too many publishers" warning for them. The only solution that I can expect is that adengage is secretly backed up with 1 out of 2 of these things: 1. A site that is under contract to take "every click they can get" or 2. They own a few sites that they will accept "mass clicks" and payout for themselves. You have a ad network of your own. Surely you know the aspect of this balance.
I personally have built two ad networks in my life (the first one back in 1997 and one just last year). We sold both of ours for $X,XXX,XXX The key to an ad network is that you have to have advertisers. Anyone can get publishers, but if you own the advertisers you will get quality publishers. As others have said, it is a symbiotic relationship of advertisers and publishers, but gathering quality advertisers is much harder.
Getting QUALITY and targeted advertisers is a very difficult thing. Your best bet is to build an ad network that is just for one niche (e.g. a game ad network) and therefore you can just get publishers and advertisers in one niche. Doing a quality general ad network is nearly impossible at this point. Think of YPN. It has a very hard time getting targeted advertisers. And that is Yahoo with tons of marketing resources.